The Home Depot Assortment Strategy
Ensuring the right products reach the appropriate stores at the optimal time, all at the right price.
A B O U T
Wayfair, with its diverse portfolio of retail websites including the primary Wayfair site, Joss & Main, AllModern, Birch Lane, and Perigold, is expanding its retail presence by launching stores across the USA, followed by expansions in Europe. This strategic move aims to enhance visibility into the eclectic product offerings and elevate brand awareness. Our collaborative efforts focused on shaping the in-store experience, exploring innovative ways technology can streamline in-store processes, and augmenting customer experience to new heights.
R O L E
My Role: Senior UX | UI Designer
Tools: Figma, Miro, AirTable, Sketch
Skills: ADA, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Prototyping, Storytelling, Usability Testing, User Interviews, Design System, Workshops, Presentations, Quantitative and Qualitative UX research, Personas, Data, Analytics, Field research, Competitor analysis, Affinity mapping, Observational Study,
Platforms: Desktop, Tablet, PC, Mac
T H E P R O B L E M
Inventory Woes
Current supply chain errors and outdated management tools are causing misalignment between merchants, stores, and customers. This not only disrupts product availability but also burdens merchant planners, hindering optimal product strategy. How can we streamline these processes to improve both operational efficiency and customer satisfaction?
Skills: User Interview, Vision Work Shops, Personas, Field Research, Observational Studies
When the product arrives at the store and doesn’t have a place to live.
People
Problems
"I’m always on edge, worrying I'll mess up using these tools for my maintenance tasks. One mistake and it could cost the company millions!"
"I’m swamped with communicating and handling maintenance tasks all the time! It’s leaving me with no time to strategically manage my assortments."
"I really don’t have a clear picture of what products we're selling in our stores. It’s a bit of a struggle."
“I’m really feeling a disconnect here; the tasks I’m handling now are nothing like what I was told I'd be doing when I was hired.”
Business
Problems
Significant portions of our inventory, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, are being misplaced or overlooked within our stores, leading to substantial losses.
We are experiencing an excessive number of
e-velocity SKUs, impacting our inventory management efficiency.
Our merchants are facing challenges in constructing optimal assortments and require increased support from their merchant planners to effectively curate the right product mixes.
The management of these assortments is excessively time-consuming, impacting overall operational efficiency.
D I S C O V E R Y
What’s really going on
To gain deeper insights into the challenges our users encountered, we dedicated substantial time to conducting user interviews, observational studies, and heuristic evaluations of existing tools, striving to unearth prevalent issues. Our exploration revealed a noticeable misalignment between merchant planners and merchants regarding task expectations and actual deliverables. There existed a disparity between the strategic tasks management aspired for them to undertake and the maintenance tasks they were immersed in.
Exploration of the Product's Journey to Sale within the Store.
The daily tools required by Merchant Planners for maintaining their assortments.
User Interface of one of the tools utilized for assortment maintenance
P E R S O N A S
The Merchant Planner
A Merchant Planner (MP) operates under the direction of a merchant, focusing on enhancing sales, optimizing inventory, and bolstering profits within their designated product group. Serving as the primary support for merchants, MPs meticulously manage assortments, addressing both planned resets and unforeseen actions or requests, ensuring adaptability during events. MPs engage with various teams to understand prevailing trends and hurdles impacting the merchant's business category. Initially, we presumed the existence of distinct persona types among MPs. However, further investigation revealed that the variances in operational methods are predominantly influenced by the specific business classes they oversee.
Upon hiring, a merchant planner is expected to collaborate with merchants in strategically building assortments. However, due to the numerous tools, errors, and extensive communication required between stores and other partners, they end up spending the majority of their time on maintenance tasks instead.
Expected
Reality
Based on surveys, analytics, and user interviews.
P L A N N I N G
After identifying various issues in processes and tools, our product team meticulously prioritized tasks based on user impact, business goals, and feasibility. This strategic evaluation fostered a unified approach and clear direction, allowing the team to collectively focus on addressing the most crucial and actionable problems, thereby ensuring alignment and commitment towards shared objectives and enhancements.
Prioritization
A ranked list of status changes to facilitate the smooth flow of products through our store.
E X E C U T I O N
Design. Test. Repeat.
Given our users were co-located with us on campus, collaboration on solutions was frequent and multifaceted, involving interviews and design studios, and the refinement of preliminary wireframes. These collaborative efforts allowed us to validate and ensure that we were crafting the optimal user experience. Consequently, we achieved a high degree of confidence that the developed solutions would address the challenges encountered by both the users and the business effectively.
A basic method for incorporating and withdrawing products from our stores.
Insights from a Merchant Planner within our Heaters and Humidifiers Department
V I S U A L S
myAssortment was designed with the aim of enhancing efficiency and minimizing errors by offering greater visibility and control over assortments within a single, centralized tool. Fundamentally, myAssortment is designed to enable Merchants and Merchant Planners to allocate the appropriate product to the right store, empowering in-store associates to better serve their customers.
my Assortment
Insight into how associates can arrange their products and see what’s available in the stores
Neatly organize larger assortments and ensure they are perfectly aligned with the stores and their intent.
T H E T E A M
Balanced
Cross-Functional
The team was structured into several squads, each comprising 1 Product Manager, Experience Designer (XD), a Development Lead, and 6-8 developers. Leads from within these squads actively participated in all stages of the product process, ranging from initial discovery research to final usability evaluations. Multiple such teams collaborated within the Merchandising domain, collectively addressing various experiences such as Pricing, Space Planning, and Assortment.
Some cherished colleagues from the Merchandising Design team whom I deeply miss.
R E S U L T S
We’ve marked a substantial triumph with the launch of ‘myAssortment’, which has streamlined workflows, saving thousands of hours for Merchant Planners and significantly reducing tool complexity. This user-centric innovation has not only made daily tasks more intuitive but also resulted in substantial savings, minimizing inventory losses and enhancing overall operational efficiency and financial health.
The Outcome
I N V E N T O R Y A C C U R A C Y
81%
We observed a remarkable improvement in inventory accuracy, rising from 62% to 81% within the initial six months. This enhancement was largely attributed to an enriched understanding of the products within their respective stores.
Problem Solved: “I really don’t have a clear picture of what products we're selling in our stores. It’s a bit of a struggle."
H O U R S S A V E D
40,000
Over the initial year, we achieved a cumulative saving of 40,000 hours for Merchant Planners by streamlining tasks, diminishing the reliance on multiple tools, and minimizing the necessity for extensive communication.
Problem Solved: “The management of these assortments is excessively time-consuming, impacting overall operational efficiency..”
I N V E N T O R Y S A V E D
$80 Mil
By optimizing inventory levels, aligning them with planograms, and maintaining precise quantities of items in each store, we minimized the prevalence of evolicty SKUs. This strategic refinement in our inventory management process has resulted in substantial savings.
Problem Solved: “Significant portions of our inventory, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, are being misplaced or overlooked within our stores, leading to substantial losses.
The work you have done has been outstanding. Your effort in pulling this together helps to tell the story and showcase the value of the app to leadership. Great job!
— Devan Dixon Senior Product Manager
C O N T A C T M E
Let’s Chat.
I’m always open to discussing design, sharing insights, exploring collaboration opportunities, or just having a friendly chat about anything creative! Feel free to reach out.